Bibi has point over Palestine leader's role in Holocaust

That Benjamin Netanyahu's comments that "placed the blame for the extermination of millions of Jewish people during World War II on the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini" have "been met with outrage by writers and users of social media" (News, October 21) is more a reflection of the PC narrative that the Palestinians are the innocent victims of Israeli extremism than a sober assessment of the facts.

That Benjamin Netanyahu's comments that "placed the blame for the extermination of millions of Jewish people during World War II on the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini" have "been met with outrage by writers and users of social media" (News, October 21) is more a reflection of the PC narrative that the Palestinians are the innocent victims of Israeli extremism than a sober assessment of the facts.

His comments may well not have been entirely accurate, but there are three points that are certainly true.

First, the initial policy of the Nazis was to expel Germany's Jews rather than annihilate them. Admittedly, there were massacres, especially after the invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941.

However, these were a far cry from industrialised extermination, only definitively decided at the Wannsee conference on January 20, 1942, followed by the opening of Belzec (February), Sobibor (April) and Treblinka (July) to carry it out. All this was long after Hitler's meeting with the leader of the Arabs in Palestine, on November 28, 1941.

Secondly, the latter would certainly not have been averse to such a policy, having conducted a campaign since the early-1920s under the slogan of "Idbach al-Yahud" ("Slaughter the Jews").

Thirdly, he continued to spread this message in broadcasts from Berlin throughout the war and, perhaps more significantly, raised three SS battalions from among Balkan Muslims to help the Nazis implement their policies.

While he may not have been "the one to initiate the mass-murder of European Jews", he certainly had a central role in it, prompted by his fear that, otherwise, "they'll all come to Palestine".